Should husbands and wives procreate AND renovate??

Iffy.

You know the old book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus? In my opinion, there is a reason they compared men to Mars, which denotes being “out there” or crazy, and women to Venus which has the connotation of beauty and grace. Makes perfect sense to me. Now, I’m not about to bash men. Truly I’m not. Some of the best times in my life revolved around the opposite sex. However, when you decide to take on a renovation with your man, you are stepping into dangerous territory or simply put, stepping into doo—doo.

Phil and I do pretty well in the beginning and then slowly we start to wear on each other’s nerves. And it’s all his fault. For sure. Remember I’m from Venus. Perfect. Never annoying. Always delightful. He’s from Mars. Irrational. Weird. Three heads. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. It’s not that there is any yelling - although we are probably both yelling in our head “IDIOT!” -  just exasperated looks and a whole lot of mumbling under the breath.

One of the causes of these frustrations we have while working together is lack of communication. Women in general use words (lots of them) to communicate. Usually more than a man wants to hear. Phil is a man of few words, unless he is watching the news and then it’s a free-for-all peppered with a lot of profanity. So, while working together sometimes he thinks I can just read his mind about how to help him lift something, or where to shine the flashlight, or which wrench to hand him, or maybe I just happened to ignore the fact that he was in the crosshairs of the spray paint. Honest mistake, really.

He is an efficiency expert. I’m the opposite. It’s Oscar and Felix from The Odd Couple all over again. Yet we managed to gut a bathroom and completely re-do it and somehow remained man and wife. It was touch and go though. But when we finished and stood back and looked at our work, we were proud of each other and also secretly thankful one of us didn’t shoot the other with the nail gun. I know that behind the scenes in the new show “Fixer Upper” that Chris and Joanna Gaines must call each other an ass under his or her breath every once and awhile, or at least roll their eyes when the other one isn’t looking. They CAN’T be that happy right? I think it’s a plot to make the rest of us look like failures as renovating spouses.

The reason I’m bringing this up now is that we are nearing the end of the master bedroom renovation. We made it through the dresser mirror installation – barely. Is it my fault that it took me such a long time to decide where to hang it? Yes the mirror is huge and he was holding it up all that time by himself. Hmmphf. Small detail. At least it is to someone from Venus.

However, even with that small glitch it’s been going pretty smoothly, but shark infested waters lie ahead. It’s time for the crown moulding. Crown moulding means that I will be an integral part of the installation, meaning I’m supposed to hold the other end. It’s inevitable that I will silently be asked to read his mind and will fail to do so thus resulting in a calamity.  Uh oh – a nail gun is involved in this. Maybe I should wear a suit of armor. 

A sneak peak at the progress we have made... together.

BEFORE: a hot mess

AFTER: sleek, and contemporary